Archive for January, 2011

The University at Albany’s Student Sustainability Council is approaching the end of it’s third year in existence. Very exciting things have been happening throughout the past few years, and our growth has been excellent. I’ve been a member of the council from the very beginning and it’s been a wonderful experience. I’ve grown from a freshman council member, to a sophomore council chairman, and now as a junior I am both a chair and I work in the Office of Environmental Sustainability. Throughout the past two and a half years, we have all learned so much about the needs of the campus, the student body, and even the council itself. Each year we have progressively started earlier each semester, and have be able to do more each semester because of this. In an effort to do even more to expand our role on campus, and our ability to create a sustainable community at UAlbany, we are working on a new plan for the Sustainability Council. We will unveil the new Student Sustainability Council later in this semester, and it will be implemented in time for next year. This is a very exciting time for us all and we hope that more and more people will become involved each year.

We will be holding a spring kick-off event next Wednesday, February 2nd, at 8pm in Lecture Center 5, showing the video “The Story of Bottled Water” and holding a discussion afterward. Stay tuned for more events and information!

One of the great sustainability traditions at our university is our participation in Recyclemania, a national contest between colleges and universities. UAlbany takes part in many of the categories including the Gorilla Prize (most recyclables) and Waste Minimization.

We are striving for a goal of 300,000 pounds of recyclables during the ten week period. One item new this semester is the bottle return machine in the campus center. We had a kick off event for this last week. We’re anxious to see how the campus community will receive this new outlet for their returnables and also to see how much use it will get!

We’ll be out in force over the next few weeks, at basketball games and at the apartments, to collect returnables, which we will donate to the Music Mobile, our local non profit organization that specializes in music and environmental education.

Come out next week for our kick off event: February 2nd at 8 pm in LC 5. We will be viewing the Story of Bottled Water and getting our teams together for collection drives.

Those stopping by to answer trivia questions did very well! I think approximately 75% of people came away with a prize. We’re not giving out answers here because we plan on doing more contests over the next few weeks.

Welcome back everyone! We have a new addition on campus – a bottle return machine! This is located in the campus center food court, lower level near the SEFCU branch. We’re excited about having the opportunity to offer the campus community a place to bring their bottles and cans. Plastic and aluminium only though. Slips need to be redeemed at the Outtakes store.

We’ll be having a promotion tomorrow (Thursday) from 12 to 1 pm. Look for the tweets from our office and UAS. We will be broadcasting out trivia questions related to recycling (like do you know how many hours you can run a TV from the energy saved by recycling one can?). Stop by with the answers and win a prize. There will also be a chance to enter a raffle and win a year’s supply of Coca-Cola.